


The paradox of season four and season five

by orphan_account



Category: Fringe
Genre: Meta discussion, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 11:09:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warnings: This is meta - or rather a discussion regarding the ending of Fringe - which I hope people will participate in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The paradox of season four and season five

Fringe:

 

 

Prior to seeing the finale, there were two possibilities for the reset, although like _monanotlisa_ by the end of the series I was hoping they’d chose neither and resolve the conflict in the present day (2036) rather than wiping out the last twenty odd years and restarting at 2015.  And if they  _had_  to do a reset, I was personally hoping it would be a complete reset – Walternate saves Peter without the Observers – and he grows up in red verse.  Mostly because shipping isn’t the be all and end all for me, and secondly because that path led to a whole slew of possible fan-fics.  But putting personal preferences aside, the ending they did choose, concluding with that day at the park, I’m happy with, ecstatic even, because it was beautifully acted, and oddly enough, the story makes sense.  
  
A lot of fandom's discontent seems to stem from the idea that if there are no Observers – then there’s no one to rescue Peter and Walter from the lake when they cross over – and no, I don’t think the writers forgot about it, season four in fact, already dealt with it – because there  _were no_   _Observers_    at the lake when Peter and Walter crossed over – and yes, the red Peter who should have been raised in the new amber timeline did in fact _die_.  Walter lost both Peter’s in 1985.  There were no survivors.  Without September there – without the Observers – Peter drowned in Reiden lake at age seven, and without the Observers, Walter managed to drag himself  _onto_   the ice and save his own life.  All of this was accomplished (or lost) without interference, all of this was established in season four.

But the Peter we have on our screen  _isn’t_  the amber Peter.  He’s blue-ish, with the blue history and the blue memories.  He’s the original paradox.

Note the word - and the word Fringe has always used - is paradox, definition: a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement. 2 a person or thing conflicting with a preconceived notion of what is reasonable or possible.   
  
He should have ceased to exist (and briefly did) when his timeline ceased to exist, except Olivia, through cortexiphan or love or some magical combination of the two wouldn’t let him go, he shouldn’t be there at all – and yet he is.  It doesn’t matter what they do to his 'past' in amber because Peter was never there to begin with, he arrived fully formed as an adult in the amber timeline in  _ **2012.**  _ So far, so good, the Fringe writers haven’t done anything wrong, and if you accepted Peter in season four under that premise (Olivia saved him.  Or if you're not a shipper, the Machine protected and spat him out in the newly reformed world), then there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t accept his continued presence post  _re-set_  in season five.   
  
He’s not part of this timeline – he’s the flotsam and jetsam - the remaining debris of blue.  
  
The second argument is a little more tricky: and that’s when you take it one step backward and ignore the crossing at the lake and focus your attention on Walternate being distracted by September in the lab.

If the Observers never exist – which is Walter’s and September’s end-plan in season five – then Walternate was never distracted at the lab.  He would have found the cure for his own son in Boston, while Elizabeth and Peter were at Reiden Lake.  Peter would have been raised in red-verse, and our amber/blue Walter would have had no reason for crossing over in the first place (the scenario I was personally hoping for).  I liked it as a theory because it’s nice and neat and a solid argument - it doesn't involve the word 'paradox' - ironically it's  _logical_ , not messy at all.  But having said that  (and liked it),  there are rebuttals for it, too, the most clear of which is this – the telling of Peter’s ‘kidnapping’.   
  
There are three different tellings of this story, retold over the first three seasons of Fringe, and in each season, the story is subtly different.

Season 1  (There is more than one of Everything): " _Around this time, something was lost to me, Peter.  Something precious.  I became convinced that if only I could cross over myself, then I could **take**  from there what I had lost from here."_

I watched the first two seasons of Fringe on DVD, and I remember my first reaction to that scene - specifically the wording and the emphasis - indicated that it was a kidnapping.   That the mad Walter, the Walter that was, the one hinted at but never seen on TV, (the one who shocked Peter as a boy, who thought human experiments, and experiments on children no less, was perfectly acceptable, the one who Walter was terrified would collaborate with the Observers in 5:09, the one filled with his own hubris - the one who,  _unlike Walternate,_  removed pieces of his brain to change who he was becoming) was motivated by loss.  He saw a chance to take another person’s son and replace what he, personally, coveted.  That he went over there with the express purpose of kidnapping Peter.  I was dead certain of it when we first glimpsed Walter with his full brain function in season two's Grey Matter, that showdown between Walter and Newton remains one of my favourite scenes to this day – and gave me chills with just how coldly  _indifferent_  Walter was portrayed. I actually believed that theory right up until I saw the episode  _Peter_   and then I thought - bugger got that one completely wrong - because version two of that story was no longer –  _then I could take from there what I had lost from here_  – version two of that story was, my son was dying, and I was the only one who could fix him; crossing over was an act of compassion, best intentions gone wrong, version two of that story was:

_"And I realised at that moment that despite what I’d promised, what I fully intended to do….that I could **never**  take Peter back.  The way she looked at him, I saw in her what I feared most in myself when I saw him…that I couldn’t lose him again."_

Suddenly it isn’t about  _taking_  something that was lost, it’s about  _saving_  something, and then being unable to return it, having a version of their son right there with them, living and breathing, and deciding to keep him, despite the ethics. By the time season three rolls by, the story has evolved one more time:  
  
" _These lies were supposed to be a temporary measure.  We were supposed to have him home **well** before it got this far."  _

It’s no longer  _I could never take Peter back….I couldn’t lose him again –_ instead it’s __‘I have every intention of keeping my promise.’__ All three versions exist within Fringe’s parameters – this is how it happened, this is how it happened, and this is how it happened - Walter's id, ego, and superego, and any of these versions are extremely plausible.   Suffice to say, if it’s the original version of the story you're looking at – then you don’t need September in the lab, or any other Observer at all – because the  _Walter that was_  would cross over and take that boy regardless, setting the original chain of events in motion.  Because he can, because he doesn't care about the consequences, because he wants his son back.  

Blue Peter is always stolen.  Amber/red Peter always dies at the bottom of Reiden Lake, because there were no Observers.  

The first three seasons of Fringe are told as individual chapters, yet they're strongly interconnected. The writers start all over again after season three and present us with the amber-verse, but season four and season five are just as strongly interconnected as the original three seasons, despite fandoms general dislike for it.  Like Walter says in season four, powerful events in the future can ripple backward in time. If the finale is the powerful event (more critically when Walter steps into the future), then 1985 is the first point of change, and if the beginning of season four posited that _both_ versions of Peter died because _there were no observers there_ , then season five is actually showing us - step by step - how that came to pass, everything else in between is the writers playing catch-up, leading the audience by the nose and showing the sequence of events that led to it.  And thus, the only thing we're left with, is the original paradox.  
  
Blue-Peter is the: one person or thing conflicting with the preconceived notion of what is reasonable or possible, he's the original paradox, the sole survivor of a reality that happened but was over-written, remembered only by Olivia (through cortexiphan) and now Walter (through Michael) and it isn't logical, it doesn't make sense, and its not sane, and to be honest I don't really give a damn, because that ending had me laughing, in tears, and emotionally all over the place.  

To quote Elizabeth, in the episode which introduced a field of  White Tulips to the Fringe audience, it's about a 'scientist who used his  _heart_  and his  _imagination_  to shape the world he wanted', at it's core, Fringe favours  _feeling_ over  _logic_ and it always has.  
   
As a pre-existing paradox - the only character who's not a part of the amber timeline to begin with (or at least, not before the year 2012) - Peter's the most logical person to take Michael into the future - ideally you want to limit your number of walking contradictions, not increase them to the number of three - except Peter’s already made the sacrifice of resetting time once before, the very thing that made him a paradox to begin with, and Walter won’t allow, or ask his son to do it again, not when he has Etta and Olivia, not when he finally etched a home for himself.

 

 

Edited:  This is a standalone theory - or rather what I was thinking when the series ended, and is independent from the comments section.  

But I urge everyone to read the comments section, every single one, because there's an array of different ways of looking at Fringe - noticably both in how, and *why*, the war between red and blue verse would always start even if the Observer's weren't there.  Plus a quick thank you to *everyone* who participated, because sometimes I need to hash things out.

Edit number 2: And I recommend you don't read the theories in the comments all in one rush, but walk away for a bit, because for me at least, it cuts down on headaches and confusion. : )


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